Hacker News Reader

Comment by foxglacier | Hacker News Reader

What I don't understand about people complaining about governments removing programs and reducing their staff is that implies either the status quo is just right or it's already not enough. Should they have hired 900 new workers too or just left it alone? Where were the complaints about previous governments not growing them fast enough? Will they accept any correction from an overshoot in finding the right amount?

Apparently NOAA grew rapidly in the previous few years [1], so was it underfunded by Obama?

[1] https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12406/3

View on HN

Sudden unconsidered change in any direction is virtually always harmful.

Given the need to walk back some firings [1], it's reasonable to infer that the ongoing cuts aren't being done in a particuarly thoughtful manner.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/nx-s1-5302019/bird-flu-usda-f...

> What I don't understand about people complaining about governments removing programs and reducing their staff is that implies either the status quo is just right or it's already not enough

One might be able to make that case when just considering a single agency. However this is happening across many agencies. It is extremely unlikely that they would all be significantly overstaffed.

Another sign that this is not a legitimate effort at just getting rid of workers that aren't needed is that they aren't deciding who to fire based on merit. They are deciding based on who is easiest to fire procedurally.

See Chesterton's Fence.

I'd be surprised if it was not increasing, BTW, given the increasingly volatile climate we find ourselves in.

Musk has said that if you remove something that turns out to be important, you can always put it back. I think this is how they're operating. Like a giant scream-test. Some staff and agencies will return but only when the problems of their absence have become clear. This is one way to improve efficiency which may be very effective at the cost of some disasters here and there.

That only works for things that have immediate impact, less so for things that take time to blow up. But then all people involved have moved on and you’re left plugging AI, I guess.

If the reason for the downsizing truly was due to being overstaffed and having many duplicate roles, then sure, that would be a good move. However, the RIFs are coming because of ideological differences with the co-presidents' beliefs or vendetta for some aggrieved idea.

> that implies either the status quo is just right or it's already not enough

Or it implies headcount is not the only variable you can tune to increase efficiency.

Here's an earlier complained about NOAA being understaffed:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-shutdown-is-weakening-ou... from January 11, 2019:

> The shutdown exacerbates a long-term problem within the NWS: it’s badly understaffed. According to the most recent Government Accountability Office report about the NWS, 11 percent of positions within the agency were vacant as of 2016. Then, last year, the Trump administration cut the agency’s budget an additional 8 percent and recommended cutting 355 jobs.

That report is from 2017 at https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-17-364.pdf , which further cites a 2012 review by the National Academy of Sciences and a 2013 National Academy of Public Administration report.

The article says forecasts would be fine even during that temporary shutdown but long-term research would be reduced. There's no ceiling to how much long term research you can do so they'll always be understaffed as long as somebody believes that even more research could be fruitful.

You asked 'Where were the complaints about previous governments not growing them fast enough?'

I answered with an example of a previous complaint.

I take it then you did not read the report? It goes into details of why they were understaffed compared to what they were in 2012:

> Beginning in 2013, a series of events led to a hiring backlog at NWS. Specifically, in response to the 2013 federal budget sequestration, NOAA implemented an agency-wide hiring freeze.26 Because WFMO generally could not hire or replace departing employees during the freeze, the number of vacancies at NWS increased. According to WFMO officials, when the hiring freeze was lifted in 2014, demand for hiring across NOAA was high. Simultaneously, WFMO had experienced a high level of attrition during the freeze—in fiscal years 2013 and 2014, approximately 50 percent of WFMO staff handling hiring left the agency, according to a WFMO official—and therefore, WFMO could not keep pace with the hiring demand when the freeze was lifted.27 In fiscal year 2016, attrition at NWS outpaced WFMO’s hiring abilities. Over the course of the fiscal year, 191 staff left NWS, and WFMO hired 157 external candidates, according to WFMO data. Therefore, NWS’s hiring backlog increased. ...

> According to NOAA budget officials, an administrative spending cap has limited WFMO’s ability to increase its hiring activities to address the hiring demand ...

It also mentions some of the problems which have nothing to do with long-term research:

> However, taking these steps, according to managers and staff, at times led to their inability to complete other key tasks, such as providing severe weather information support to state and local emergency managers. ... managers in five operational units said that managers and staff worked overtime to cover forecasting shifts and ensure forecasts and warnings were issued.

I don't think anybody is against optimizing government agenesis and their spending. People question the motives behind it. This is clearly done with ideological intentions, because Elon and Trump thinks that the big government in itself is a problem – as all fascists do. When you remove all government agencies and replace them with corporate interest you get what Mussolini called Corporatism but what we now know as fascism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism

Leaving motives aside, I question the process. There doesn't appear to be any cohesive plan or vision. It's all slash-and-burn, damn the consequences. I'd like to see a plan put together and put before Congress. The Republicans have the majority, so they can ultimately do what they want. But it would at least provide an opportunity to review the consequences, so we don't have an "oh shit" moment when some critical service fails.

Their approach is breathtakingly reckless.

>complaining about removing programs and reducing staff implies either the status quo is just right or it's already not enough.

It doesn't imply that. How could one possibly feel this is comparable to a numeric slider being adjusted, where everybody simply has an opinion about which number it should be at? For every single cut: What, specifically, is being cut? By how much? Which positions? How is the cut being executed? What's the ostensible reason/expected outcome? What's the actual motivation? Under what authority/process? What are the side effects? Are there other ways of improving the process besides cuts? Is the person doing it also mocking the people who they're firing?

People give a shit about a lot of things, and they don't need to have all these questions in their head explicitly to do so. Systems and human opinions aren't that simple - especially super-gigantic systems and the opinions of hundreds of millions of people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com